The study examined the perceptions of 1,638 secondary
individualized education program (IEP) meeting participants from 393 IEP
meetings across 3 consecutive years. Results indicate significant
differences between the survey answers and participant roles, when
students did or did not attend their IEP meetings, and when different
professional team members attended the meetings. Special education
teachers talked more than all team members. Students reported the lowest
scores for knowing the reasons for the meetings, knowing what to do at
the meetings, and five other survey items. General educators rated
themselves lowest on three of the survey questions. Student and general
educator attendance at the IEP meetings produced value-added benefits
for IEP team members, especially parents.

Authors:

Martin, James E.Marshall, Laura HuberSale, Paul

Pub Date:

03/22/2004

Publication:

Name: Exceptional Children Publisher: Council for Exceptional Children Audience: Academic; Professional Format: Magazine/Journal Subject: Education; Family and marriage Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2004 Council for Exceptional Children ISSN:0014-4029

Issue:

Date: Spring, 2004 Source Volume: 70 Source Issue: 3

Accession Number:

114328007

Full Text:

The Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975 (Public Law
94-142) established that individualized education programs (IEPs) guide
the educational experience of public school students with disabilities
(Goldstein & Turnbull, 1982). This legislation mandated that
parents, special education teachers, and administrators attend IEP
meetings to develop IEPs for students with disabilities. For the first
time in public school educational history, parents of students with
disabilities attained formal educational planning status equal to that
of teachers and administrators.

The required addition of parents to the educational planning
process met with immediate skepticism. Farber and Lewis (1975), for
example, thought the inclusion of parents into the IEP planning process
represented a symbolic gesture rather than an effective means for
improving educational planning and teaching. Yoshida, Fenton, Kaufman,
and Maxwell (1978) surveyed the professional members of IEP teams and
found that a majority of professional team members wanted parents to
only gather and present information at the IEP meeting, and not to
become involved in actual educational planning.

Goldstein, Strickland, Turnbull, and Curry (1980) studied IEP
meeting interactions of students with mild learning problems who had
been mainstreamed into general education classes. They found that
special education teachers talked on average twice as much as parents,
and parents talked more than anyone else at the IEP meeting. Educators
and administrators directed most of their comments to the parents. These
results suggest that parents had indeed become actively involved in the
educational planning process. No students in Goldstein et al.'s
study attended any of the IEP meetings.

Pub. L. 94-142 directed that students, whenever appropriate, could
participate in their own IEP meetings and take an active role in the
educational planning process (Gillespie & Turnbull, 1983).
Strickland and Turnbull (1990) considered the inclusion of students into
the educational decision-making process as one of Pub. L. 94-142's
fundamental premises. Unfortunately, most parents and children with
disabilities did not know that students could attend their IEP meeting,
even though parents and students who did know overwhelmingly supported
the concept (Gillespie, 1981). Because of the lack of knowledge, the
past practice of not including students in the IEP meeting, and the
paucity of literature on student involvement in their IEP process, few
students actively participated in their own IEP meetings (Gillespie
& Turnbull; Strickland & Turnbull).

These transition reforms should promote active student engagement
at IEP meetings and facilitate the development of increased student
self-advocacy, decision making, and other self-determination skills
(Field, Martin, Miller, Ward, & Wehmeyer, 1998b; Furney &
Salembier, 2000; Halpern, 1994; Martin, Huber Marshall, & DePry,
2001). However, implementation of these transition reform efforts has
been slow, with most states failing to achieve even minimal levels of
compliance (Grigal, Test, Beattie, & Wood, 1997; Hasazi, Furney,
& DeStefano, 1999). The National Council on Disability (2000)
reported that "88% or 44 states failed to ensure compliance with
transition requirements" (p. 89). Williams and O'Leary (2001)
found that many schools do not invite students to their own IEP
meetings. Johnson et al. (2002) indicated that secondary education must
improve student attendance at IEP meetings and prepare students to
actively participate in their meetings so they can lead discussions
about their plans and goals. The U.S. Department of Education's
Office of Special Education Programs, Expert Strategy Panel Report
indicated that today's secondary schools provide too few
opportunities for students to learn and practice IEP leadership skills
prior to their IEP meeting (U.S. Department of Education, 2001). Even
so, a growing number of students do attend their IEP meetings. Many of
the statewide transition system change grants sponsored by the U.S.
Department of Education encouraged student involvement in their IEP
meetings (Williams & O'Leary).

Emerging studies report that when students attend their IEP
meetings without specific IEP meeting instruction, students do not know
what to do, lack understanding of the meeting's purpose or
language, feel like no one listens to them when they do talk, do not
know the goals or other outcomes of the meeting, and think that
attending the IEP meeting would be a meaningless activity (Lehmann,
Bassett, & Sands, 1999; Lovitt, Cushing, & Stump, 1994;
Morningstar, Turnbull, & Turnbull, 1995; Powers, Turner,
Matuszewski, Wilson, & Loesch, 1999; Sweeney, 1996). These studies
suggest that asking students to attend their IEP meetings without prior
IEP meeting instruction may actually cause educational harm and result
in more students becoming disillusioned with their formal education
(Lehman et al.; Powers et al.).

IEP meetings occur for every student who is eligible for special
education and related services. Much has been written on IEP procedural
details and their impact on educational outcomes (Smith, 1990), but
little information exists on participant perceptions. For example, we
don't know the value-added benefit of students and general
educators attending the IEP meeting, or the perceptions of IEP team
members to student participation in the IEP meeting, and whether their
perception differs when students do or do not attend the meetings.
Answers to these questions may facilitate implementation of IDEA's
secondary transition reform measures. Thus, this study examined the
perceptions of IEP team members. Specifically, we wanted to determine if
perceptions of IEP meetings differ by IEP team members' role, and
if their perceptions changed when different team members, including the
student, attended the meetings.

METHOD

SUBJECTS AND SETTING

The 1,638 participants in this study attended 393 IEP meetings held
over 3 consecutive, academic years. The number of participants at each
IEP meeting ranged from 1 to 18, with a mean of 4.3 participants per
meeting. Table 1 depicts the number of participants by role and school.
Participants self-identified their role. As identified by the
students' school name, 25% of the participants came from junior
high schools, 21% from middle schools, and 54% from high schools. We did
not collect other demographic data, such as student disability, age, and
meeting topics in order to preserve confidentiality per the requests of
the cooperating school districts. Participants came from the school
districts from four cities or towns in one southwestern state. Two
school districts located in one metropolitan area contributed more than
57% of the data. The rural school district contributing the least amount
of data provided 4.4% of the total surveys. Each district had
participated in a statewide transition system change project, which
strongly encouraged student attendance at IEP meetings.

INSTRUMENT AND PROCEDURES

A two-part, 10-item questionnaire provided the data for this study
(see Figure 1). Part one asked the participant to check one of the
following seven IEP team member roles: (a) student, (b) parent, (c)
administrator, (d) special education teacher, (e) general education
teacher, (f) related services, or (g) other. Part one also asked the
participants to indicate who attended the meeting: (a) student, (b)
parent, (c) administrator, (d) special education teacher, (e) general
education teacher, (f) related services, or (g) other. Part two, which
consisted of 10 survey items, asked respondents to answer by marking
"not at all," "a little," "some," or
"a lot." Three secondary special educators and one special
education administrator assisted with writing the survey items, and then
reviewed them for wording, clarity of expression, and how each marched
the purpose of the study.

Each year we provided the special education chair at each
participating school with a packet of surveys. We asked the chairs to
distribute them at the end of the IEP meetings for all of their students
with mild to moderate disabilities, including those with learning
disabilities, mild to moderate mental retardation, and emotional
disabilities. We made follow-up phone calls or visits to the chairs
during each year to answer questions and to offer encouragement. If an
IEP participant could not read the questions, another participant read
the questions and possible answers and facilitated marking an answer.

RESULTS

We converted the answers to each survey item into a number, with 1
representing "not at all," 2 representing "a
little," 3 representing "some," and 4 representing
"a lot." A one-way multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA)
determined the effect of who completed the survey items across the 10
survey questions. We then used an analysis of variance (ANOVA) as a
follow-up test to the MANOVA, and the conservative Scheffe's F
procedure to determine the meaningful post hoc mean comparisons.

DIFFERENCES BY QUESTION AND BY WHO COMPLETED THE SURVEY

A one-way MANOVA determined significant differences between the
roles of those who completed the survey, [LAMBDA] = .55, F(70, 9, 283.9)
= 14.16, p < .01. Table 2 presents the means and standard deviations
for each survey item by participants' role. An ANOVA was then
conducted on each survey item as a follow-up test to the MANOVA. As
depicted in Table 3, we found significant differences in how the IEP
meeting participants answered each survey item.

Post hoc analyses to the univariate ANOVAs consisted of pairwise
comparisons to determine the IEP team participants who answered the
survey items differently from one another. Table 4 depicts the
significant pairwise comparisons by each survey item. Special education
teachers reported talking significantly more at the IEP meetings (Item
3). Special education teachers also reported helping make decisions
(Item 7) than all participants but the administrators. Parents reported
talking more about student interests (Item 6) than all participants but
students and special education teachers.

Out of the 95 significant pairwise comparisons, students responded
differently than other IEP team members 45 times--far more than any
other team member. Students reported knowing the reasons (Item 1),
knowing what they needed to do (Item 2), and understanding what was said
at the meetings (Item 8) significantly less than all other participants.
Except for the general education teacher, students also reported feeling
significantly less comfortable saying what they thought (Item 4) and
knowing what to do next (Item 9) than all other IEP team members.
Students reported talking significantly more about their interests (Item
6) than the general education teachers and the "other"
category of IEP meeting participants.

Table 4 also indicates that general education teachers reported
helping make decisions (Item 7) significantly less than all IEP meeting
participants. General education teachers knew what to do next (Item 9)
less than all other IEP meeting participants except students. General
education teachers reported talking about student strengths and needs
(Item 5) at a level equal to that of parents and special education
teachers, but less about student interests (Item 6).

WHEN STUDENTS DID OR DID NOT ATTEND THEIR IEP MEETINGS

Students attended 70% of the IEP meetings (277 out of 393). We
found significant differences between the responses of IEP team members
when students did or did not attend their meetings, [LAMBDA] = .973,
F(10, 1589) = 4.44, p < .0001. We then conducted t-tests for student
presence at the IEP meeting by questions, split by who completed the
form, and found several significant findings. When students attended,
parents reported significantly higher scores (t = 2.36, p = .02) on Item
1, "I knew the reason for the meeting." When students
attended, responses to Item 4, "I felt comfortable saying what I
thought," produced three significant results. Parents (t = 4.21, p
< .0001), general educators (t = 1.98, p = .05), and related services
personnel (t = 2.36, p = .02) felt more comfortable saying what they
thought. When students attended, administrators talked significantly
more about student strengths and needs (Item 5; t = 2.36, p = .02) and
about their interests (Item 6; t = 2.68, p = .008). In the meetings that
students attended, attendees in the "other" category reported
helping to make decisions less when students did not attend (Item 7; t =
-2.55, p = .01). When students attended, parents indicated that they
understood what was said at the meetings significantly more (Item 8; t =
4.81, p < .01). Parents and general educators also knew significantly
more of what they needed to do next (Item 9; t = 2.49, p = .01; t =
2.19, p = .03). And when students attended, general educators felt
better about the meetings (Item 10; t = 2.29, p = .02).

The attendance of the "other" category of IEP
participants also produced significant differences in how participants
responded, [LAMBDA] = .98, F(10, 1452) = 3.48, p = .0002. Team members
knew the reason for the meeting better, F(1, 1461) = 9.9, p < .01,
knew more of what do to at the meetings, F(1,1461) = 10.58, p = .001,
talked more about interests, F(1, 1461) = 6.16, p = .01, understood more
of what was said, F(1, 1461) = 14.19, p < .01, and felt better about
the meeting, F(1, 1461) = 4.29, p = .04.

DIFFERENCES BY GRADE LEVEL

Students' grade level produced significant differences in how
participants responded to the questionnaire, [LAMBDA] = .94, F(20, 3192)
= 5.3, p < .0001. Middle school participants knew the reasons for the
meeting significantly better than junior high school team members (p =
.03). Junior high and high school participants reported talking more,
talking more about interests, feeling that they helped make decisions,
understanding what to do next better, and feeling better about the IEP
meetings than did middle school attendees (p < .01 top = .04).

SURVEY RELIABILITY

We conducted an item analysis on the 10 survey items. Each item was
correlated with the total score (with the item removed), and all the
correlations were greater than .81. Coefficient alpha for the survey was
.83. The Guttman split-half reliability test produced a .86 correlation.

DISCUSSION

Parents, students 14 years old of older, educators, and
administrators for the first time in special education history now meet
together to develop the IEP. But, the literature on secondary IEP
meetings contains little quantitative information on participants'
perceptions. IDEA transition reforms center on active student engagement
at IEP meetings (Field et al., 1998a; Martin et al., 2001). We conducted
this 3-year study to increase understanding of what IEP team members
think of secondary transition IEP meetings and to determine if their
perceptions differ when particular participants attend the meeting. We
found significant differences between the answers to each of the 10
survey questions and the role of the meeting participant who completed
the survey.

VALUE-ADDED BENEFIT OF STUDENTS AND GENERAL EDUCATION TEACHERS

The presence of students at the IEP meetings resulted in many
value-added benefits and validates the usefulness of the legal
requirement that added students and general education teachers. Parents
understood the reason for the meetings better, felt more comfortable
saying what they thought, understood more of what was said, and knew
better what to do next. When students attended, administrators talked
more about the students' strengths, needs, and interests. General
educators also felt more comfortable saying what they thought, knew
better what to do next, and felt better about the meeting. The
"other" IEP participants, however, reported that when students
attended, they helped less with decision making than when students did
not attend.

The presence of general educators, related services personnel, and
the "other" category of participants at the IEP meetings also
produced value-added benefits. When general educators attended,
participants reported talking more, talking more about strengths and
needs, feeling more empowered to make decisions, having better knowledge
of what to do next, and feeling better about the meeting. When related
services personnel attended, team members knew the reason for the
meeting better and talked more about interests. Presence of the
"other" category of participants produced increased knowledge
of the reason for the meeting, more understanding of what to do at the
meeting, more knowledge of what was said, and increased positive
feelings about the meeting.

MEANINGFUL STUDENT INVOLVEMENT

IDEA secondary transition reform places the student at the center
of the IEP process. Partial fulfillment of this requirement can be seen
because 70% of the students in this study attended their IEP meetings.
Yet, meaningful student participation at their IEP meetings appears
lacking. Students reported the lowest scores on 70% of the questions and
second lowest on 20%. Students knew the reasons for the meetings, knew
what to do at the meetings, talked at the meetings, felt comfortable
saying what they thought, talked about strengths and needs, understood
what was said, and felt good about the meeting less than any other IEP
meeting participant. Students reported helping to make the decisions and
knowing what to do next less than everyone except the general education
teachers. Unfortunately, we did not obtain information to determine if
students received IEP meeting instruction prior to their actual meeting.
Because of this lack of data, we could not determine the relationship
between IEP meeting instruction and answers to the survey questions.
Follow-up conversations with the special education chairs indicated that
only a few of the students received IEP meeting instruction prior to
their IEP meeting.

Student interests should drive the transition-age IEP (Halpern,
1994). Students reported participating the most during discussions about
their interests. Yet, student responses on this question ranked third
behind parents and special education teachers. This means that parents
and special educators reported talking more about student interests than
the students did. This question also produced the lowest combined mean
score for all the participants. These results do not match the
importance IDEA places on student interest within the secondary IEP
process.

The data from this study support Morningstar et al.'s (1995),
Powers et al.'s (1999), and Lehmann et al.'s (1999)
qualitative findings and offer suggestions as to why students passively
participated at their IEP meetings. Powers et al., for instance,
indicated that students thought that their meetings were boring, they
did not understand much of what was said, and they felt ignored or that
the adults didn't respect student viewpoints. The findings in this
study and those from the Power et al.'s study may be related.
Perhaps students in Power et al.'s study felt ignored, considered
their meetings boring, and did not participate because they did not know
the reasons for the meeting, did not know what to do, felt uncomfortable
saying what they thought, and did not help make decisions.

GENERAL EDUCATION TEACHER INVOLVEMENT

General educators scored the lowest ranking on 30% of the questions
and second lowest on 40%. They talked less about students'
strengths and needs, believed they helped make decisions less, and knew
what to do next less than all other participants. They ranked second
lowest in knowing the reason for the meetings, talking at the meetings,
understanding what was said, and feeling good about the meetings. For
each item in which they ranked second lowest, student scores ranked
lower.

SPECIAL EDUCATION TEACHERS

Special education teachers lead the IEP meeting process. They
reported talking more than all team members. In comparison to the
general education teachers, special education teachers reported higher
scores on all items and significantly higher scores on seven survey
items. In comparison to administrators, the special education teachers
reported significantly higher results in talking about student
strengths, needs, and interests. In comparison to parents, the special
education teachers reported significantly higher survey scores in
knowing what to do at the meetings, talking at the meetings, helping to
make decisions, and knowing what to do next.

LIMITATIONS

Five issues limit this study. First, the likelihood of obtaining
significant post hoc pairwise comparisons increased due to the rather
large number of comparisons. We attempted to limit spurious significant
results by using the Scheffe's F-test for our post hoc analysis,
which is a conservative significance test. The significance of most
pairwise comparisons was FUTURE RESEARCH

Future research needs to address issues raised by this study and
questions that this study did not examine. More than six participant
roles attended secondary IEP meetings, and we condensed them into just
six categories. Future research also needs to examine the perceptions of
grandparents, counselors, speech therapists, and other specific
categories. Future research also needs to determine if perceptions vary
by disability. Survey items need to be expanded to include all the major
transition and IEP-related topics. Direct observation methodologies need
to be used to record actual IEP meeting behaviors and compare these
findings to the survey results. The impact of school culture and
socioeconomic status on the IEP process need to be examined as well.
Finally, future research needs to determine if student instruction in
IEP participation and leadership will impact team member perceptions and
educational outcomes.

IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE

The findings of this study clearly demonstrate how perceptions vary
by IEP participant role. Students and, to a lesser extent, general
education teachers reported significantly lower scores on the survey
items than the other participants. Both students and general education
teachers reported the lowest scores on Item 10 (I feel good about this
meeting). These and other findings suggest specific practice
recommendations.

STUDENT IEP INSTRUCTION

Educators and parents need to explain the IEP process to students,
facilitate student understanding of their disability, teach students IEP
terminology and the different roles the participants play, and provide
students with skills to actively participate in their own meetings prior
to the actual IEP meeting taking place. Numerous lesson packages exist
to facilitate teaching student IEP participation skills (see Field et
al., 1998b for a review of these materials). Two readily available and
research-supported lesson packages teach active student involvement in
their IEP meetings: The Self-Advocacy Strategy (Van Reusen, Bos,
Schumaker, & Deshler, 1994) and Self-Directed IEP (Martin, Huber
Marshall, Maxson, & Jerman, 1996).

GENERAL EDUCATION TEACHERS

Just as students need instruction in the IEP process and the
meeting, so do general education teachers. Most importantly, general
educators need to leave the IEP meeting feeling good about their
contributions and the IEP meeting. Pre- and inservice programs need to
teach general educators IEP terminology, explain the IEP process and the
different roles the participants play, and show how they can become
involved in the decision-making process.

STUDENT INTEREST

Student interest drives the development of a transition IEP.
General education teachers, administrators, related services personnel,
and the other category of IEP participants reported lower scores in
response to this survey item. Through class activities, pre-IEP meeting
discussions, or other creative means, all IEP team members need to
discuss this crucial aspect that frames the foundation of the secondary
transition IEP.

SUMMARY

Student involvement at the IEP meeting, and changing the IEP for
secondary-age students to be driven by interests and strengths instead
of just deficits, represent major IDEA transition reforms.
Axiomatically, these reforms begin with students being invited to attend
their own IEP meetings. The results of this study suggest that students
and general educators need to learn their new roles and become
acclimated to the IEP process. Personal and value-added benefits will
most likely be enhanced when students and general educators learn to
actively participate in the IEP meetings and IEP participants accept
students and general educators as equal partners to the educational
planning process.

Farber, B., & Lewis, M. (1975). The symbolic use of parents: A
sociological critique of educational practice. Journal of Research and
Development in Education, 8, 34-42.

Field, S. S., Martin, J. E., Miller, R. J., Ward, M., &
Wehmeyer, M. (1998a). Self-determination for persons with disabilities:
A position statement of the Division on Career Development and
Transition. Career Development for Exceptional Individuals, 21(2),
113-128.

Furney, K. S., & Salembier, G. (2000). Rhetoric and reality: A
review of the literature on parent and student participation in the IEP
and transition planning process. In D. R. Johnson & E. J. Emanuel
(Eds.), Issues influencing the future of transition programs and
services in the United States (pp. 111-126). Minneapolis, MN: University
of Minnesota, National Transition Network.

Halpern, A. S. (1994). The transition of youth with disabilities to
adult life: A position statement of the Division on Career Development
and Transition. Career Development for Exceptional Individuals, 17,
115-124.

Morningstar, M. E., Turnbull, A. P., & Turnbull, H. R., III.
(1995). What do students with disabilities tell us about the importance
of family involvement in the transition from school to adult life?
Exceptional Children, 62, 249-260.

National Council on Disability. (2000). Back to school on civil
rights. Washington, DC: Author.